


The world is falling around you

by jperalta



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Amy Santiago Loves Jake Peralta, Angst with a Happy Ending, Attempted Rape/Non-Con, Dissociation, Drunken Kissing, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Forced Drinking, Hallucinations, Hurt Jake Peralta, Hurt/Comfort, Jake Peralta Needs a Hug, Non-Consensual Kissing, References to Depression, Sad and Sweet, Self-Esteem Issues, Self-Hatred, Sexual Assault, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, Vomiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-23
Updated: 2020-09-23
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:16:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26620525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jperalta/pseuds/jperalta
Summary: The detachment continued to grow: was this even his bed? Was Amy really with him? It all started to feel too confusing. He looked at Amy again, skin smooth and face scrunched up while she slept. The love he felt was overwhelming and he started to wonder how people ever survived with this feeling inside themselves. Another light flashed outside, but no sound accompanied it. Yet still he felt it say something to him, and he walked out of the bedroom, out of the front door and onto the street.Jake dissociates and falls out into the city, hardly conscious, hardly aware of what's happening, while still blaming himself for everything.
Relationships: Jake Peralta & Amy Santiago
Comments: 3
Kudos: 70





	The world is falling around you

_I love you. I trust you. I love you. I trust._ These words - her words - they were repeated over and over again in his head. _She loves me. She trusts me. She loves me._

It was a Friday night, around midnight, and Amy had fallen asleep a couple of hours ago. “I’ll be right there,” Jake had said, but he ended up spending another couple of hours on the couch, episode after episode of whatever was on the TV playing in the background. The voices in the show had become static. He wished it had made him sleepy, but all it seemed to do was distance his mind from his body, to the point where he felt like he was floating above himself, looking at his body, screaming: _can’t you hear me? can’t you see me?_ But his body had remained motionless. Had he been dreaming? Could he ever be sure? 

Just then there was a noise - a loud, horrible, crashing sound, and Jake jumped back into his skin. He looked outside, looked up at the sky but saw no clouds, no rain, absolutely no sort of sign that there had just been thunder. He walked into their bedroom. “Ames,” he whispered to see if she was awake, but she didn’t reply. “Did you just hear that?” But still nothing. Amy wasn’t the heaviest of sleepers, so surely if there had actually been a loud noise, she would have woken up. She would have found herself still alone in bed, hours after he’d said he’d be right there. But the world now was as still as it had been just a few moments ago. 

Outside there was a dark purple light flashing maybe miles away. The room grew quieter. He couldn’t even hear Amy breathing. He couldn’t feel himself breathing - was he even breathing? Was she? Were they both asleep again? Had he been asleep this whole time? Goosebumps started crawling all over his skin. He fogged the mirror up with his breath and for a moment he thought he could see letters, and tried to decipher it. But then the fog faded away, and he wondered if he had actually seen anything there to begin with. More lights flashed. There had to be a storm somewhere. There had to be something. 

Jake sat down on his side of the bed and looked at Amy. _I love you. I trust you._ God, she was so beautiful. He didn’t deserve her. He didn’t deserve anything. Jake looked down at his hands in the moonlit room and still felt so detached from everything. All the emotion welled up inside of him and he fought the urge to cry. He could have cried, right there, sitting on his side of his bed with Amy asleep right next to him. Would the sound wake her up? Would she shoot up in bed, whispering _sweetie, what’s wrong? what’s going on?_ Or maybe she’d just sleep through it. He could cry quietly. He could be unheard.

The detachment continued to grow: was this even his bed? Was Amy really with him? It all started to feel too confusing. He looked at Amy again, skin smooth and face scrunched up while she slept. The love he felt was overwhelming and he started to wonder how people ever survived with this feeling inside themselves. Another light flashed outside, but no sound accompanied it. Yet still he felt it say something to him, and he walked out of the bedroom, out of the front door and onto the street.

Outside it felt abnormally quiet for a Friday night. He could swear he kept seeing a purple light flash, but whenever he’d try to look for it all he could see was darkness. Some streetlights were out, making the neighborhood darker than usual. And he knew he should go back inside, knew he should snap out of it, stop before he got hurt, before he hurt himself. But he also thought he deserved this terrible aching longing within himself that he couldn’t seem to get rid of, no matter how many combinations of pills he tried, no matter how much he tried and failed to talk about it, to get whatever _this_ was out of his system. It wasn’t even that he deserved it as much as it was just, just, a part of him now. Something embedded under his skin that he could never get rid of. A disease or an illness that was starting to define him. And he hated it. So he didn’t go back inside. Instead he began down an alley he’d never been down before, practically begging for someone to jump out of the shadows and rob him, punch him, hurt him, do _something_ to him because he wasn’t brave enough to do it to himself.

Then he entered that dream-like state again. He was gliding through a flashing purple light, clouds around his feet, and the temperature must have dropped ten degrees. It was too late to go back now. He’d almost forgotten what he’d be going back to, anyway.

After the walk through the flashing light Jake found himself in a loud room. When had he walked into a bar? He couldn’t remember. Someone was talking to him - a man, someone he of course didn’t know. Then there was a warm and rough liquid being poured down his throat, even though he didn’t remember ordering anything. But he hardly remembered anything anymore. All the liquor did was make everything worse. All it did was spread the sadness all around his body to the point where he didn’t even think he had any blood left inside of him - just this aching sadness.

Then he heard Amy - was it Amy? He could swear he heard her voice. At least some voice was telling him he was beautiful, asking if he was okay, pouring more liquor down his throat. When he swallowed it brought tears to his eyes. The voice was deeper again, and he felt so confused, unable to tell who he was with and what was going on. There were rough hands all over his body and he was squirming away, saying no, or at least he thought he was saying no. But he must have not been because suddenly he was in a horribly bright bathroom, flinching away from the light, and he could feel lips against his own. _Amy, Amy, please let it be Amy_ . His pants were pulled down and he sensed a presence behind him as he shivered. _Stop it, please,_ he wanted to scream, but he found himself mute. So he just started crying again, way too confused to make a decision about anything. The voices were whispering to him, things like ‘you’re doing great,’ ‘you’re so beautiful,’ ‘stop crying, my dear, and kiss me back.’ There were hard and gripping hands on his face, his back, his ass, and it wasn’t until he felt something hard press against his backside that he keeled over and vomited. There was the sound of scuffling and then he knew he was alone again. 

Another lapse of time must have come and passed because soon he was back out on the street, and he would’ve thought what had happened just then was just a dream except he could still taste the vomit in his mouth. The more he tried to convince himself that he was home, with Amy, the more it became clear that that wasn’t the case. He could see flashes of strangers’ faces surrounding him, could still feel the hands on him as he started to shake. _Oh God,_ he said to himself. _I… I cheated on her._ The thought made his stomach churn again and he threw himself towards a trash can to get sick again. As he heaved everything up the tears came almost too easily to his eyes, and he felt such a horrible sense of shame as he pushed himself farther away from home.

The moon hung heavy over the city and Jake wondered what it would feel like if the darkness just swallowed him whole. He couldn’t go home, could he? No, he didn’t deserve to be home. He didn’t deserve to _have_ a home. No matter how much mouthwash he swished in his mouth he could never get out the taste of those other people’s tongues inside his mouth. He should’ve just stayed home, should’ve gone to bed when Amy had, then he could have avoided all this. But no - he was punishing himself for something, never entirely sure of what but always punishing himself for something. Jake just leaned against the side of a closed-down building, hands around his head, wanting to scream until there was nothing left. Maybe there was already nothing left.

It was then that he met the eyes of a bus several blocks away, barreling down the empty street. The light poured into his eyes for a moment and he started mindlessly walking towards the street. _It could all be over. You wouldn’t have to hurt anyone anymore._ He was inching closer and closer to the road, his toes hardly hanging off the sidewalk. But as the bus shot by him a hand yanked him backwards by his shirt.

Someone was talking to him again, and it took a while before he could even process that he was still alive. The voice was gentle but needed to be listened to, so Jake tried hard to focus. His vision stopped blurring, and he saw a man in front of him, wearing a giant tattered hat and what looked like a pair of pajamas. He looked familiar, but Jake couldn’t tell why. His throat was dry, but finally he managed to mutter, “I’m sorry, what are you…?”

“I said, where are you going, son?”

Jake thought back on everything and wanted to cry again. His heart was heavy as his mind drew a blank. “I… I don’t know,” he choked out.

“Okay,” the other man said, rubbing Jake’s shoulder. “Why don’t you just go home?”

It was so simple that the only thing Jake could think to do was say “okay” before turning around and heading back home. He must have not been too far because he was somehow able to get back without being entirely conscious, and when he reached the first door of his building he looked back and saw the man had stayed behind him the whole time.

“You’ll be safe now,” the man said, seeming like a character from a movie. Then as quickly and strangely as he appeared, he vanished into the night. 

Still halfway in a trance, Jake made it up the stairs to their apartment, and was immediately thrust into the absurd light of the apartment, Amy standing right in front of the door.

“Jake! Baby, forgive me, but what the fuck just happened? You disappeared, didn’t tell me where you were going. I must have called you a thousand times! I swear, I was about to report you missing.”

Jake just stood there, still confused, forever confused. Amy reached into Jake’s pocket and pulled out Jake’s phone, showed him the screen and he saw several texts and missed calls from Amy he didn’t remember hearing. He remembered the bathroom and started to cry again, wanting all these memories to go away so he could just believe he’d been home safe with Amy the whole night. 

When he started crying Amy tossed the phone aside and led Jake to the couch. “Jake, honey,” she said soothingly, brushing her fingers against the back of his neck in a way she knew had calmed him before. “Tell me, what’s going on?” She leaned in to kiss his cheek but he pulled away.

“You should hate me,” Jake said quietly.

Amy held Jake’s hands in hers, felt how cold they were and held them to her mouth as she let hot air out of her mouth onto them. “I could never hate you,” she replied. “You had me so worried.”

He wanted to jerk away from her hands because he felt he didn’t deserve it, yet allowed himself to be selfish by staying in her grasp, accepting her warm breath, her soft touches. 

“There were… people. In a bar, they… I…” He tensed up underneath her palms. “I think I… cheated, I…” The sobs were coming again and he couldn’t control it.

Amy put a hand on either side of his cheeks. “Jake, look at me,” she said in a firm tone, and he did. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

He shook his head. He had to tell the truth. “No, you don’t understand. I… they… I was-”

“Jake, do you even remember how it started?”

Jake shook his head again, ashamed of himself for a thousand reasons. 

“Do you remember if you even agreed? If they even asked?”

The memory was building back up in his head and he still couldn’t think that clearly, but he remembered wanting it to stop. But if he hadn’t said anything, wouldn’t it still have been his fault? In his silence, Amy squeezed his hands tighter. 

“Honey, I’m so sorry that happened to you,” she said while thumbing the tears of his cheeks. “But God, you didn’t _cheat_. You were assaulted.” The realization crept over him, and he still couldn’t help but to feel dirty and terrible, but something about the understanding in her voice was putting a light into him again. “You’re really out of it, sweetie. Honestly, I think you’ve been out of it for a few days but tonight it just got so much worse.” 

She tugged on his hand and he stood up immediately, willing to follow her wherever she thought best. He kept reminding himself that he hadn’t cheated, that maybe everything could still be okay. He followed Amy into the bedroom and she helped him out of his clothes and into the bed. Her fingers were so warm on his skin, he wanted her to stay with him forever. Then he remembered the man in the giant tattered hat, and from his lips he whispered, “a guy saved me.” Amy said nothing, just rubbed her hand over his forehead. “I… I think I almost stepped in front of a bus, and he saved me.” He could feel the tears falling from Amy’s eyes onto his chest.

“Thank you for telling me,” she said in a quiet and shaking voice. “We’ll call your doctor tomorrow. We’ll think of the next steps tomorrow, but tonight…” She kicked off her slippers and got back into the bed, this time with him in it. She put her head onto his chest and he held her shoulders tightly, unwilling to let go. She ran her fingers tenderly over his chest, placed her lips on his skin, and he put his own on the top of her head. “Tonight, just go to sleep.”

**Author's Note:**

> Title: Airborne Toxic Event - Sometime Around Midnight


End file.
